Sublime

For half my life I never stopped to wonder, how much was magic? How much was plunder?

But they bear little resemblance to the conversations we have in daily life. Unlike an actual conversation, which requires only two people, a Fresh Air interview is a team effort. One of my producers finds and books the guest, a researcher locates the material I need to look at for background, an associate editor cuts the tape, and the executive pr

Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors,

Sorrentino,

Wherever her family went, she became the node that connected all wandering Americans worth knowing.

pernicious

Madame Lapierre came from an upper-class, highly educated family. For her entire life she had lived in the sixteenth arrondissement, close to Passy, and I struggled to picture Father in those spaces. I imagined him sitting on the edge of a leather couch, or always staring out of a window, wanting to be elsewhere. I was relieved he wasn’t from Paris

Media critic Howard Kurtz is one of the few noting the decidedly unjournalistic tone of the sordid saga. “Where are the corrections from everyone else who ran with this story?” he asks on his Fox News program, Media Buzz.